


Sleep & Forgetting

by CracklPop



Series: Stetopher Week 2019 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Cop Chris Argent, Drug Addiction, Drug Lord Peter Hale, M/M, Multi, Sadness, Stetopher Week 2019, These Tags Are Grim, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 06:09:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CracklPop/pseuds/CracklPop
Summary: Stiles is an addict, Peter is a dealer, and Chris is a dirty cop. It’s...ah...as depressing as it sounds. For the Stetopher Week 2019 prompt "Criminal Activities."





	Sleep & Forgetting

**Author's Note:**

> This is about ADDICTION and DEPRESSION, so if those are triggers for you, turn back!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from these characters.

It started with selling the Adderall. Or maybe it started even earlier, with the liquor. With that first, hesitant sip of whiskey, his father’s cure for grief. Or maybe Stiles was just born under an unlucky star, maybe it went back to the months his cells were forming in Claudia’s womb, knitting together a boy who was destined to chase oblivion in place of happiness. 

Stiles often reminded himself, especially when he first came to the city, that it wasn’t so bad working for the Hales—he knew plenty of other kids who hadn’t made it, as he had, past eighteen in their line of work. And Peter Hale made sure Stiles got what he needed. So long as he behaved, of course. 

Stiles knew how to do what he was told. After his mom got sick, he’d done everything his dad had said to. And plenty of things his dad hadn’t thought to ask. But that was part of helping each other, wasn’t it? That was part of being a good boy. 

At first, when his dad had gotten drunk and sloppy every night for two months following the funeral, Stiles had been upset. He’d tried to rouse his father when it was bedtime, tried to remind him in the morning about going to school, about permission slips for field trips, about the scary-looking letters from companies with names like PG&E. 

But Noah didn’t seem to notice or care that there were steps missing in his routine. He went to work, he came back, then he started drinking as soon as he got into the living room, keeping up a steady intake until he passed out on the couch, tan uniform crumpled around his body. 

Stiles wasn’t a baby—he could put himself to bed, he didn’t _need_ his dad to do everything for him. But it was hard, it turned out, to do the things his mom used to do. The laundry machines were big, and it was confusing trying to figure out how much detergent to put in. He abandoned the idea of fabric softener entirely and his clothes never smelled or felt the way they had when his mom had washed them. 

There were leftovers to eat for two weeks after Claudia’s funeral; neighbors had brought pans of chicken enchilada bake and meatball lasagna and a strange casserole involving potato chips that Stiles hadn’t been brave enough to try until it was the only thing left. 

Then Stiles had found out how hard it was to cook. He’d remembered long, lazy Saturday mornings making pancakes with his mom, how she had deftly flipped the little discs to make them brown evenly on both sides, how the syrup had glistened when she poured it with a generous hand. The things Stiles made by himself were disasters, in the beginning. French toast with globs of uncooked egg yolk clinging to it, tomato soup with a skin on top and a burned crust on the bottom, toast that the butter never seemed to melt into the right way, leaving him with torn patches and cold lumps. 

When Stiles was thirteen and sick of being the only one who seemed to care whether he was pulling straight A grades or being held back to repeat a year, he hid one of his father’s whiskey bottles in his room. He waited for two days before putting it to his lips and drinking. It burned all the way down and made him hazy and sick. At first he didn’t understand the appeal, but then, as the world grew fuzzy and his heart grew numb, he came to see what his father might enjoy.

When he was fifteen and put on Adderall to treat the ADHD his school counselor finally pushed to have formally diagnosed, Stiles couldn’t get enough of the clarity. He could direct his attention as he’d never been able to as a kid. He didn’t zone out as much, he could hold his tongue in class. 

But then an older boy in Stiles’ English elective, one who’d never talked much to Stiles before, asked him how much he wanted for some of his Adderall. And Stiles—always too loud, too smart, too weird to have many friends—saw a new way to live. By the time Stiles was seventeen, he’d gone from overlooked outcast to controlled-substance kingpin at Beacon Hills High. 

Stiles had been friends with a kid named Scott McCall when they were in elementary school, and he’d maintained a vague line of social contact ever since. It wasn’t too hard to rekindle the relationship, and Scott, the son of a nurse, was a convenient gateway to the drugs at the hospital. Stiles was as subtle and clever as he could be about it, but he knew it was a short-term thing, that the risk of discovery was too high. He’d been considering ways to liberate certain items from the evidence room at the sheriff’s office when Noah Stilinski, driving under the influence, hit and killed the mayor’s daughter. 

Everything came out then. The alcoholism, the years of badly managed cases, the close calls swept under the rug. Even before the trial, there wasn’t much doubt that Noah would spend time in prison. Melissa McCall posted his bail and the former sheriff went back temporarily with his son to their chilly home. 

Noah, red-eyed and trembling, had pulled Stiles into a long, hard hug, whispering about how sorry he was, so fucking sorry, kiddo. Then he went upstairs and shot himself in the head. 

Stiles left Beacon Hills after that. 

He dropped out of school and dodged his would-be guardians, disappearing into the streets of San Francisco, where the only person he knew was his first customer ever, the boy from his long-ago English class who’d bought the Adderall. The phone number still worked, and it turned out that Stiles’ old pal knew some people who might have work for him, helping out with a family operation whose business Stiles was already familiar with. 

The Hale family was ruthless, mercenary, and powerful. They ran their territory with viciousness and precision, and Stiles quickly heard the stories about what happened to people who tried to cheat them. No major drug-related transaction took place within the Hale family borders without the Hales having a piece of it. 

Stiles started off small—occasional deliveries, driving people around, general grunt work. He worked his way up, though, and soon he was allowed into the big place in Pacific Heights, where Talia and her three kids—her lieutenants, really—lived. Stiles was curious about the Hales. He knew that, two generations ago, they’d lived in Beacon Hills. There were still buildings named after them. But something had shifted in the family business over the years, and although the Hales ostensibly ran the original company, it was clear to Stiles that the real money came from the illicit substances he helped move. 

Talia Hale was regal and icy, and Stiles never caught more than a glimpse of her. Initially, he dealt primarily with Derek, Talia’s son. Derek was as gorgeous as an ancient Greek statue and about as warm. He didn’t smile at Stiles’ jokes. He didn’t blink at Stiles’ sarcasm. He once punched a hole in an elegantly painted mural in the front hall and told Stiles to get the fuck out. Stiles got. 

Following the punching incident, Stiles started working more with Cora, Talia’s youngest. She was a better fit for Stiles, and sometimes when their business was done and Stiles was getting ready to go, Cora would look as though she wanted to make him stay. She never said anything out loud, though, and Stiles had learned not to get attached to anyone likely to be temporary. Which was everyone. 

When Stiles turned nineteen, Cora threw him a party. Which meant she invited their mutual acquaintances and paid for a round of drinks at a bar the Hales had a stake in. It was the first night Stiles tried his own product. It was the first night he saw Peter. 

Heroin was revelatory—like every muscle was relaxing into bliss, like the world was welcoming him, like he would never feel alone or scared or unsafe again. And it still paled next to the perfection of Peter Hale. 

Stiles, body humming with a glorious high, watched the bar door swing open to admit a beautiful, confident man, whose blue eyes shifted to him after a brief conference with Cora. Then, incredibly, he was moving toward Stiles, putting a strong arm around Stiles’ shoulders, a broad hand coming up to brush Stiles’ unruly hair back from his face. 

Cora introduced them and Stiles melted into Peter’s firm grip. He wasn’t even a stranger; this was Cora’s uncle, her family, and Stiles knew _family_ meant something to the Hales, something it had never meant to Stiles. He peered up at Peter’s stern, handsome face with trust and adoration. 

Peter pulled at the sleeve of Stiles’ thin henley and gently fingered the fresh puncture marks on his otherwise unmarred arm. He made a low noise, something both regretful and possessive. Stiles’ forehead wrinkled at the combination, but then Peter drew him closer and all Stiles could feel was pleasure. Hard chest, hard arms, hard cock. He buried his face in Peter’s thick neck and moaned. 

Stiles had thought about having sex before his nineteenth birthday, of course. He was a teenager, he wasn’t unattractive, and he worked in a high-risk industry. People were making bad decisions regularly, all around him, every day. And he was always welcome to join them—plenty of them would have paid him to join them. But something always stopped him before it went further than making out. He _wanted_ to be close with someone else like that, he did, he just…he couldn’t let that wall down, he couldn’t relax when he felt vulnerable. 

But Peter fixed everything…or the heroin did. Stiles was never sure, later. 

Peter took him into a room in the back, and all Stiles could ever truly recall afterward was the feel of the leather couch against his bare skin and the slickness of the lube as Peter worked his way inside. Everything was _so good_, so soft and tender and safe. Stiles couldn’t…he wasn’t even aware of his orgasm. Peter cleaned him up and put a blanket over him and by the time Stiles came down and was vomiting on the floor, Peter was gone. 

Stiles was Peter’s, after that. He only worked with Peter. Even Cora he just saw a couple of times a month. The agreement Stiles had to rent a scruffy bedroom ended and Stiles didn’t try to get it back. He was spending too much time at Peter’s place to justify the expense. Besides, Peter lived in a painstakingly restored Victorian in Russian Hill, with a bathtub the size of Stiles’ old bed and a seemingly endless supply of books and food. 

Peter sent him on fewer jobs, but the H was always there when Stiles wanted it. Or the molly, or the stardust. If he was good, naturally. Peter liked things a certain way, and it was Stiles’ job to make that happen. He liked Stiles best in clothing that was both tighter and more revealing than Stiles would have chosen for himself, but it wasn’t a big sacrifice to dress to please Peter. Especially since Peter paid for the clothes. 

Peter liked Stiles ready and willing any time Peter wanted to have him, but he also occasionally wanted to see the spark of defiance that had marked Stiles since childhood. It was sometimes hard for Stiles to find the line between what he felt and what he knew would please Peter. Stiles’ world narrowed to the art of reading Peter’s moods—a twitch of his eyebrow and Stiles knew to submit, a quirk of his lips and Stiles should remember how to be sarcastic. 

His reward was to know that Peter would protect him, care for him, own him. And let him shoot his veins full of poppy-derived paradise. Stiles, drifting on the edge of euphoria, could spend an hour staring at himself in the mirrors that covered the walls of Peter’s excessively luxurious bathroom. He startled himself at times, suddenly not recognizing the face gazing back at him. On some level, Stiles still thought of himself as a gangly thirteen year old, and it could be shocking to realize the long-lashed, golden-brown eyes rimmed with smudged, black kohl were _his eyes_. That the hollow cheeks and smooth, pale skin were on _his face_. If Stiles tilted his chin at a certain angle, it was Claudia looking back at him. If he tipped his head to the side, he could see his father. 

But Stiles didn’t try to see his parents very often. The vague, blurred cast to his features when Stiles was high reminded him of the way Noah Stilinski had looked when blackout drunk. Stiles didn’t want reminders. He thought of the fairy tales his mother had told him, and the myths and stories he’d read after she was gone, wanting to immerse himself in another world, far away from his, where he could escape. _Lotus-eater_, Stiles called himself. He’d found a different way to escape. 

Peter’s schedule was irregular, but Stiles didn’t have anything to do except what Peter told him to. He got lonely, waiting for Peter, but he never tried to make any friends. Stiles considered calling Cora, but the few times he’d hung out with her after his birthday party, she’d been sad and distant with him. 

Stiles thought he remembered seeing her at Peter’s place one time, when he was floating in an ocean of ecstasy and splayed over Peter’s lap, grinding himself against Peter’s taut stomach and whimpering. Distantly, Stiles recalled Cora’s voice, sharp with disapproval, and Peter’s reply, lazy and amused. He was telling Cora that Stiles was pretty, and good, and perfect just as he was. The words made Stiles’ scattered mind hum with pleasure. Peter liked him the way he was. Peter didn’t want him to change, or leave, or…. Stiles couldn’t remember the rest, but he didn’t see Cora much after that. 

Later, when it was winter and the streets seemed perpetually wet from the persistent, sullen drizzle of cold rain, Peter brought home a cop. The sight of his uniform, damp and wrinkled, made Stiles freeze when he saw it. He couldn’t stop seeing another uniform—one that was tan but just as crumpled. One that had clothed a different man, although his eyes had shared the same look of bleak resignation as the cop in Peter’s house. 

Peter introduced the worn-down cop as Christopher Argent, smirking while he performed the courtesy. Stiles, half naked and coming down from his last dose, nodded jerkily and lay back on the couch, a video game paused on Peter’s massive television. 

The cop—Christopher—disappeared into Peter’s bedroom and Stiles could hear them fucking as he absently rubbed at an ache in his back. He felt dry and too hot and he pressed his cheek to a cool spot on the upholstery with a sigh. Idly, Stiles wondered what Peter had on the cop. Stiles knew the signs of someone given over to despair, someone who didn’t care anymore about things like ethical behavior or moral guidance. After all, Stiles saw those same signs in himself every day. The heroin helped, obviously. It never touched the heights of his first, dizzying hit, but it was enough. He got by. It quieted the other parts of his brain, the ones that tried to point out that he was still young and smart, that he could detox and start over. 

Stiles snorted and rolled over, facing the couch’s high back. Fantasies. He would belong to Peter until he fucked up and died of an overdose. Or maybe Peter would help him, unasked, with that overdose. Stiles thought he might not even mind. Peter could decide when Stiles had lived long enough, then put him down painlessly, like a favored pet. 

Christopher reemerged at some point, limping and wincing but more relaxed than he’d gone in. Stiles knew the feeling. 

Peter followed a few minutes later and made his leisurely way over to a large armchair. He beckoned Stiles to sit at his feet. Stiles, obedient, curled up there, resting his head on Peter’s knee and letting his eyes drop half-closed as Peter carded his fingers through Stiles’ hair. 

Christopher watched them for a few minutes before he got up and made himself a drink. The familiar scent of whiskey floated over to Stiles and he suppressed a shudder. He would never welcome the taste or smell of it, not even while high. Peter made a soothing noise and tugged gently at Stiles’ hair. Never let it be said Peter was a _needlessly_ cruel master. 

It became apparent to Stiles as Peter and Christopher talked that they’d known each other for years, maybe decades. Stiles had heard of Christopher’s family, the Argents, but he hadn’t known that Christopher was the black sheep, an unwilling scion who’d rejected every lawless Argent action and instead taken up arms and sworn an oath against the crimes his family committed. 

Of course, in the end, Christopher had broken; bending the law to suit his own purposes once had led to a long, slow slide into bribery and subversion and violent acts of vigilantism. Peter apparently had solid evidence of most of it, but Christopher didn’t seem to resent him so much as accept his demands, his face weary and fatalistic. 

Stiles could sympathize with that, too. 

Christopher stopped by fairly regularly after the first time. Sometimes Peter took him back to the bedroom and Stiles zoned out, pushing the sound of their grunts and cries to the background, below the noise of the television or, if his attention span was good that day, the plot of a book. Other times Peter wanted to watch Christopher fuck Stiles—mostly his mouth. Stiles knew Peter had a particular fondness for seeing Stiles’ lips stretched thin around a thick cock, tears streaking down his cheeks and ruining his omnipresent black eyeliner. 

Peter was the only one who ever fucked Stiles’ ass, and he worked Stiles up to being taken from both ends by Peter and Christopher. Stiles suspected Peter was well aware that he’d been Stiles’ first sexual partner, and there was no doubt in Stiles’ mind that Peter intended to control Stiles’ body for the rest of his life. 

Whenever Stiles’ mouth was stuffed full of Christopher’s long, curved prick, the other man wore an unaccustomed expression of laxity and peace. Peter seemed incapable of fucking anyone without looking predatory. And Stiles…imagined he looked like a pretty, vacant doll. 

Eventually, Christopher started dropping in when Peter was out. They both knew better than to play with each other in Peter’s absence, but Stiles increasingly found Christopher’s patience and absence of judgment appealing. The cop would listen to Stiles ramble about everything from the possibility that some of the Black Plague victims had really been infected with anthrax to the likelihood that Stiles’ favorite baking show contestant was going to screw up her ambitious cupcake tower. 

In between commenting on the erosion of face-to-face contact in the age of smartphones and the superior taste of tap water in San Francisco, Stiles let slip things about his life prior to Peter. In turn, Christopher—_you can call me Chris, Stiles_—told him about growing up in the viper pit that was his childhood home. 

One day Stiles looked at Chris—face softened by laughter, long fingers gesturing animatedly to illustrate a point—and saw that the light had come back into his eyes. That night, Stiles stood in front of the mirror and ran his fingertips across the contours of his face, examining the dull glint of his own eyes. He looked…hard. A lifeless shape carved from ice. He tried to remember what he’d looked like…_before_. But he couldn’t determine which events he was meant to be thinking of. Before…what? Before he’d met Peter? Before his father fell into the bottle? Before he’d lost his mom? Before. _Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting_, Stiles thought, reaching out to touch the glass of the mirror. 

He turned away then, curling up in Peter’s bed and not bothering to draw the blankets over himself. He was chilled, but he’d be warm soon enough. Peter would be back, and he’d have something sharp and lovely to press into Stiles’ skin, piercing deep and leaving behind an exquisitely painful rapture.

Spring crept through the streets of the city cautiously, bringing buds to a barren a tree here, coaxing shy crocuses into bloom there. Chris brought the smell of fresh air and sunshine to Stiles, who was reading in the window seat of Peter’s front room. 

The brightening that Stiles had observed earlier had only grown in the intervening time, and Chris had all the energy of the changing season. He was restored, he said, ready to make a life wholly free of his family and his decayed ideals. And he wanted Stiles to leave with him. 

Stiles considered it. No more Peter. No more highs. A different version of Stiles. Plaid shirts, maybe, instead of bare skin. Weekends of hiking and cooking and exploring new places, instead of staying within a few minutes of Peter’s home. Days, weeks, months of withdrawal symptoms. Vomiting, fevers, despair. No one to keep him sheltered and enveloped and dazedly untethered to reality. 

He nodded slowly, meeting the clear blue of Chris’ eyes with a feeling in his chest he didn’t recognize. It might have been hope. 

Chris left to make plans and Stiles watched from the window as his tall, rangy form dwindled in the distance. Shortly after, Peter came up the street. A few minutes later, Stiles was greeting him near the door, crushed against the wall, his lips bruised by the force of Peter’s kiss. 

Peter pulled back, examining Stiles with possessive hands, tilting his head and staring at every angle of his face as though he wanted to memorize it, sear it into his mind. He took his phone from his pocket and set it on the hall table. Stiles automatically followed the motion with his eyes, seeing a screen divided into small squares, each displaying a room in Peter’s house. He made out a tiny image of himself, pressed close to Peter that very moment. 

Stiles blinked for a second in belated realization. He’d never thought much about it, but it felt inevitable that Peter would constantly be watching him. 

Peter chuckled softly, his fingers almost reverent as he turned Stiles’ face up and kissed him again, lovingly this time. Then he presented Stiles with a perfectly prepared syringe and Stiles couldn’t stop the anticipation building in him at the sight. 

Peter helped clean Stiles’ skin—his neck these days, not his arms—then they lifted the needle together and released the achingly sweet rush into Stiles’ bloodstream. It was intense this time. Stiles felt his heart beating as if it wanted to fly away, free from the cage of his ribs. 

He staggered, falling into Peter, feeling himself lifted into Peter’s muscled arms. Stiles let his leaden eyelids drop, barely aware of the way his breath was shortening as his limbs grew heavy. He was swept away from everything pained and twisted and filthy in his life. _A sleep and a forgetting_, Stiles thought again. But now he remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a departure for me in many ways. No dialogue! Very difficult for me to write. Also, no happy ending. I'm not sure which thing was harder to stick to. If you got through it, thank you for reading! 
> 
> Poem referenced is Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_.


End file.
